reef-pi :: An opensource reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi.

[bishoptf]

You actually have me thinking. Which is a bad thing lol. I was digging through pictures and found a single pic of my planted tank from 2005. Do I need another tank?

wow beautiful tank, just really nice!

 

[Ranjib]

Its been long since I took my coral's photos. Apartment move, tank setup, holiday season, flu. life was busy :-/ .. And the tanks took a hit during the tranfer as well as me doing some long due chnages in rockscape, fast growing corals during the move. Today I got some time...
So I downsized from three tanks to two, got rid of one of my pico , fluval spec 3. I didnt like that tank's corner rims. But the livestock of that tank, a zoa island now reside in the other 3.7G pico tank, aka bozeman.

Its not in great shape, due to all the changes, but the zoas are getting back their health, i tested some sps frags, without luck, i guess its too soon. May be couple of months later.
rastas

Othe paly,

Test green slimer frag, .. it became brown..lets see how long it last..

 

[Ranjib]

Grace, my biocube29 is also slowly getting back in shape. Currently, turbo's are chomping on GHA.

Chilli-pepper montipora

red dragon, almost lost it,.. but i think in due time it will recover.

strawberry shortcake..

non name green/brown acro (tenius)

Ricordia (moved from older pico)

Lepto..

Zoa island in the biocube29,

No name tenius

Forestfire digitata

Micromussa/acan lord

Goniopora

Grandis paly (reloacted from pico)

Micro goni (stings everything nearby)

Cyphastrea

Lepto

SPS island on top (purdon the wrong iso settings)

LPS+green slimer on the bottom

Side view

 

[theatrus]

Grace, my biocube29 is also slowly getting back in shape. Currently, turbo's are chomping on GHA.

Chilli-pepper montipora

red dragon, almost lost it,.. but i think in due time it will recover.

strawberry shortcake..

non name green/brown acro (tenius)

Ricordia (moved from older pico)

Lepto..

Zoa island in the biocube29,

No name tenius

Forestfire digitata

Micromussa/acan lord

Goniopora

Grandis paly (reloacted from pico)

Micro goni (stings everything nearby)

Cyphastrea

Lepto

SPS island on top (purdon the wrong iso settings)

LPS+green slimer on the bottom

Side view

Those zoas are really reeeeaccching. Any idea what your sandbed PAR is?

 

[Ranjib]

Those zoas are really reeeeaccching. Any idea what your sandbed PAR is?

It's a80, thats 15W spread wide, run at 60%, so I wont expect a lot, I am planning to slowly ramp it up. I may get a160 if i see consistent failure with sps. I'll definitely add a powerhead sometime soon. I think zoas and sps wont mix well in such a small space. I'll shoot for high flow...

 

[Bigtrout]

You actually have me thinking. Which is a bad thing lol. I was digging through pictures and found a single pic of my planted tank from 2005. Do I need another tank?

What kind of question is that?
Do I need another tank is ALWAYS answered with a yes!!!

 

[DirtDiggler2823]

What kind of question is that?
Do I need another tank is ALWAYS answered with a yes!!!

Nice

 

[dmolavi]

oof, got sidelined this past weekend with whatever stomach bug is plaguing the eastern seaboard and multiplying faster than Catholic rabbits... Good reading here, and hope to get back to my reef-pi build and wrap it ASAP.

 

[geekengineer]

oof, got sidelined this past weekend with whatever stomach bug is plaguing the eastern seaboard and multiplying faster than Catholic rabbits... Good reading here, and hope to get back to my reef-pi build and wrap it ASAP.

Hope you get feeling better.. sounds nasty.

 

[Stephen2]

Did anyone create a pcb or hat for the reef pi?

 

[dmolavi]

Hope you get feeling better.. sounds nasty.

Yeah, it was no fun. Knocked out myself and one of my kids. Thankfully, the better 3/4 was there to take up the slack. Fingers crossed nobody else in the house gets it. If there is an upside to this one, it's fast moving...1-2 days and then you're clear.

 

[dmolavi]

Did anyone create a pcb or hat for the reef pi?

@theatrus has a Pico board for it, yes. PM him for details. My build thread has some images of a highly customized build.

 

[crusso1993]

Did anyone create a pcb or hat for the reef pi?

@Stephen2 - please follow the link below for additional reef-pi resources.

https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/

 

[bishoptf]

Hoping someone can help me out with some pi woe's, basically I have a pi 2 and it's not delivering any power to the USB ports, a USB stick will work but an optical mouse won't. Started digging in and found some good information but would like to bounce some stuff to helpe correct the problem. If anyone has some *cough* spare cycles just shoot me a PM.

Thanks

 

[Mendeln]

I’m currently change all my passwords and I give it a try with reefpi too
thing is you can use a password with 100 characters, small, big and special character.... nice

is there a maximum length of characters?

 

[Zekth]

The length of the text field: 255 i think

 

[bishoptf]

Need some electronic advice, I think I figured it out and but would like someone to chime in. The problem I was having was with a raspberry pi 2 I was passing 12v through a lm2596, I had adjusted it before connecting to the pi, adjusted it to 5.1. had everything connected and loaded e everything up but noticed that my usb ports we're not providing any power, Zippo, nada. Did a lot of scratching my head since it's an older pi that was in parts bin but it had worked fine.

Today I find a URL with all of the test points on the back of the pi, if we don't have that linked in reef-pi documents it should be it's pretty nice to have. When I started testing the voltage I noticed I was only getting approximately 3v at the USB test point. Then I tested the input pins and it was the same voltage approximately 3v.

What in the world, so I tested the output from the buck and same voltage, if I disconnected the pi the output from the buck would read 5.1 but with the pi connected dropped it to 3v. I adjusted it up when connected to the pi to 5.1v when connected but when not connected to the pi the output of the buck reads 6.5v. I have more lm2596 that I could try, but was wondering if I have a bad one or it's normal. The one I used for reef-pi seemed to work properly so ki d of scratching my head.

Thanks in advanced

 

[Ranjib]

Need some electronic advice, I think I figured it out and but would like someone to chime in. The problem I was having was with a raspberry pi 2 I was passing 12v through a lm2596, I had adjusted it before connecting to the pi, adjusted it to 5.1. had everything connected and loaded e everything up but noticed that my usb ports we're not providing any power, Zippo, nada. Did a lot of scratching my head since it's an older pi that was in parts bin but it had worked fine.

Today I find a URL with all of the test points on the back of the pi, if we don't have that linked in reef-pi documents it should be it's pretty nice to have. When I started testing the voltage I noticed I was only getting approximately 3v at the USB test point. Then I tested the input pins and it was the same voltage approximately 3v.

What in the world, so I tested the output from the buck and same voltage, if I disconnected the pi the output from the buck would read 5.1 but with the pi connected dropped it to 3v. I adjusted it up when connected to the pi to 5.1v when connected but when not connected to the pi the output of the buck reads 6.5v. I have more lm2596 that I could try, but was wondering if I have a bad one or it's normal. The one I used for reef-pi seemed to work properly so ki d of scratching my head.

Thanks in advanced

lm2596 is a regulated voltage output driver, i.e. it should retain the output voltage even under load. The only time it may not be able to do so, when the chip is getting hot (thermal runaway??) or if the supply current is too low. Whats your 12v power source current rating? is it a regulated power supply? are you sure its not dropping voltage (check the input pins of lm2596 with and without load)? I used 12V 2A regulated power supplies (UL listed)

 

[bishoptf]

lm2596 is a regulated voltage output driver, i.e. it should retain the output voltage even under load. The only time it may not be able to do so, when the chip is getting hot (thermal runaway??) or if the supply current is too low. Whats your 12v power source current rating? is it a regulated power supply? are you sure its not dropping voltage (check the input pins of lm2596 with and without load)? I used 12V 2A regulated power supplies (UL listed)

That's what I thought, tried 2 different supplies and both are oem supplies and not knock offs. I did a Google search and found a thread that was about the same issue, what the response was that this sometimes happen with the cheap lm2596, I ordered from Amazon and got a pack of them I will try another and see if it acts different, suspecting that it will since this is not what I saw when I used one with my reef-pi build.

 

[Bigtrout]

That's what I thought, tried 2 different supplies and both are oem supplies and not knock offs. I did a Google search and found a thread that was about the same issue, what the response was that this sometimes happen with the cheap lm2596, I ordered from Amazon and got a pack of them I will try another and see if it acts different, suspecting that it will since this is not what I saw when I used one with my reef-pi build.

I have read about some of the ebay cheapies as well...also what does a pi 2 draw? You may be close to putting those cheap lm2596 on the edge...they say 3 amps but depending on the quality they may only be good for half that.

Tom, take look at those small meanwells that diamond1 and I are using....ROCK STEADY!!!! The 5 volt one is 5 volts 3 amps about 2x2x1 inches...RS-15-5,